Tag Archives: Marketing and Advertising

I really believe it’s bad advice to recommend that companies fire their social media consultants, experts and agencies only to bring everything in house.

While “everyone” is on Facebook, social media is no longer a land of tinkerers; it’s a land of consumers. If you fill a room of potential brand ambassadors you harvest from your own ranks, I guarantee that only 1% to 10% of those people are active participants, and the rest are passive folks who are mostly lurkers. And when people bring up Zappos as the corporate exemplar, I always remind them that Zappos is exceptional and that’s why they’re the only company anyone can think of who does it as well internally. Plus, Zappos is a dyed-in-the-wool customer-service-centric company with an aggressive, visionary founder — someone who has completely rebuilt itself to over-serve its communities. Kudos, but seriously a truly exceptional example.

I know you. You’re spending all of your social media marketing budget on promoting your brand, products, and services; that’s fine except you’ve either forgotten — or never knew — that social media is a two-way street. It is.

And, something you also didn’t know: social media is two-thirds defense and monitoring — listening — and only one-third promotion and publicity — speaking. Most marketing folks not only don’t get PR but they revile it; sadly, this is what social media is, no matter what you call it: public relations, all aspects of it: publicity, of course, but also crisis management! Continue reading →

Sure and steady wins out over the long haul

They always say that the parents who put in all the boring, taken-for-granted time are the very best. That it’s not even about quality time, it’s about persistent time, time spent.

I don’t want to compare parenting to social mediacommunity development and management, but I guess I just did. Folks tend to have the zeal of the newly converted when they first adopt social media into their communications, sales, and marketing plan. However, the truth of being a “parent” is that you’re responsible for the welfare of an entitled ingrate for not just the first 18-years but for life — and that can be dispiriting. Unless you love it; unless you’re passionate; unless you pace yourself; and unless you truly bond with your beloved. As I have said before, these are human relationships and as such, they require constant gardening. They say that true beauty exists in the flaws and not in the perfection and this is true as well when it comes to the consistency of your relationship with those with whom you’re connected online. Continue reading →

Our interview took place on the third story of the historic Globe Theatre overlooking the Thames during the Econsultancy Roundtable on our last day in London, and the 5-minute video came out fairly well, considering the lack of fill lighting, the lack of a tripod and some audio artifacts from the Flip.

Sterne, head of Target Marketing of Santa Barbara, breaks down analytics into three main buckets:

3Web analytics: At each website, what is the user’s behavior? Are they arriving on the landing page? Do they bounce off (hit one page and go no further)? Can I tweak the persuasion process to improve the conversion rate? What’s their demographic and behavioral makeup? Customer satisfaction and tracking social media traffic also tie into this. Measurement tools and firms include Google Analytics, Omniture, Web Trends and CoreMetrics.

When I realized that I could download the OPML file from the Power 150 site and then hack it around into a contact list of over 900 of the top advertising, marketing, PR, and SEO bloggers on the planet, I did so.

Ever since, I have been scheduling calls with all of the folks I have been admiring on a daily basis. Two days ago I spent an hour on the horn with Lee Hopkins, “one of Australia’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment,” who is, in fact, one of the World’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment. We had a great chat — and amazing talk!